What's Your Problem?
iHeartPodcasts and Pushkin Industries
Every week on What's Your Problem?, former Planet Money host Jacob Goldstein talks with entrepreneurs and engineers tackling the biggest challenges at the forefront of technology. How do you make a trip to space as routine as a plane flight? How do you turn solar energy into clean fuel? How do you use AI to stop deadly infections before they spread? We hear a lot these days about how the world is getting worse. What's Your Problem? learns from the thinkers and doers trying to make our future better.
iHeartMedia is the exclusive podcast partner of Pushkin Industries.
iHeartMedia is the exclusive podcast partner of Pushkin Industries.
Episodes
Mentioned books
11 snips
Mar 26, 2026 • 44min
From Here We Go Again With Kal Penn: Will Technology Replace Us? with Jacob Goldstein
Jacob Goldstein, journalist and Planet Money alum who studies economic history. He traces the original Luddites and early machine-breaking. He compares Industrial Revolution fears to today’s AI anxieties. He discusses which workers are most at risk, how policy can respond, and whether new kinds of jobs might emerge.
Mar 19, 2026 • 41min
Growing New Livers to Save Lives
Michael Hufford, co-founder and CEO of LyGenesis, is building a way to grow functional livers inside patients using lymph nodes. He discusses the liver's regenerative power. He explains why lymph nodes act as tiny bioreactors and reviews animal data and current human trials. He also covers the injection procedure, safety risks, and the broader future of regenerative medicine.
10 snips
Mar 12, 2026 • 42min
Can the US Break China's Grip on Rare Earths?
David Abraham, author and rare-earths expert who studies commodities and supply chains, digs into how China built its rare-earth chokehold. He traces the 2010 warning, explains why refining and magnet specs matter more than raw tonnage, and argues electric vehicles could be the lever to rebuild U.S. industrial capacity. He warns rebuilding materials expertise will take years and careful policy.
19 snips
Mar 5, 2026 • 40min
How Quantum Computers Could Change the World
They explore practical applications for quantum machines, from drug discovery to better batteries. The conversation covers neutral‑atom qubits, building a 1,200‑qubit system, and the scaling and error correction challenges. They debate encryption risks, geopolitical competition, and how AI might help control and use quantum hardware.
Feb 26, 2026 • 49min
Fighting Wildfires from Space
Jonny Dyer, founder and CEO of Muon Space who built FireSat to detect fires from orbit. He talks about how smartphone tech made small satellites possible. He describes primitive wildfire mapping and how infrared satellites can spot tiny blazes. He explains low-cost infrared cameras, streaming data for near-real-time alerts, launch plans, and the challenge of getting fire agencies to adopt the system.
Feb 19, 2026 • 39min
The Killer We Refused to See
Tom Levenson, MIT science writing professor and author of So Very Small, traces the long road from Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes to Pasteur and Koch. He tells why early worldviews hid microbes’ role in disease. Stories include Semmelweis’s handwashing crisis, the rise of vaccines and antibiotics, and modern threats like resistance and denial.
4 snips
Feb 12, 2026 • 54min
The Startup Run by AI Agents
Evan Ratliff, journalist and serial creator who built a satirical startup run by AI agents, narrates a surreal office experiment. He describes building an AI CEO, agents that hold meetings and write code, and the chaotic human interactions that reveal agents’ limits. The story blends tech comedy with probing questions about work, automation, and who benefits from one-person startups.
9 snips
Feb 5, 2026 • 34min
Can AI Help Solve Alzheimer’s?
Patrick Hsu, co-founder of the Arc Institute and UC Berkeley bioengineering professor, merges AI with experimental biology to speed discovery. He discusses making labs efficient with model-guided experiment design. He explains DNA autoregressive models, AI-designed phages, virtual cells predicting perturbations, and implications for Alzheimer’s and therapeutics.
18 snips
Jan 29, 2026 • 33min
The New Science of Preventing Heart Attacks
Eric Topol, a cardiologist and founder of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, discusses a shift from artery blockages to inflammation as the key to heart attacks. He covers CT scans plus AI that flag inflamed arteries, polygenic risk scores, multimodal AI that predicts timing of disease, aggressive LDL lowering, and new anti-inflammatory and microbiome approaches.
Jan 22, 2026 • 41min
From Solar Pumps to Everything: Building a Market from Scratch
In this engaging discussion, Samir Ibrahim, co-founder and CEO of SunCulture, shares insights on transforming agriculture for smallholder farmers in Africa. He dives into how reliable water access can boost yields and income. Samir explains the benefits of affordable solar irrigation systems, the challenges of adding financial services, and the impressive metrics of customer engagement. He also highlights the impact of carbon credits and the potential for small farms to thrive with new technologies, effectively creating a vibrant new market.
